Starting a game

When you start Nebula.exe you first see some hints
and a starship following your mouse. Read the
hints, they are quite useful. When you are ready,
click 'Game/New...' in the menu. You will see the
first Chapter of the story scrolling through the
window. Read it or, if you have read it already,
just doubleclick inside the window to skip it.
Now you see lots of squares, bars and lines and
you probably don't know right what to do.

The funny squares, bars and lines

The squares are bases. The blue ones are your bases,
the red ones are the deldarian bases, and the green
ones (later in the game) are the kyonian bases. You
will see one or more bars next to the bases. They
show, how many spaceships are stationed at the base.
The left bar shows the number of fighters, the middle
bar shows the number of bombers (if you don't have
bombers, there will be no middle bar) and the right
bar shows the number of destroyers.
You also see some 'moving' lines with a small square
at the end. The small squares are groups of
spaceships. A line is drawn from the spaceships to
the base, where they fly to.

How to start

The best in the beginning is to let the computer AI
play a bit. To let him play, select 'AI/Do Tactics'
and 'AI/Do Battles' in the menu and the computer
will send your ships towards the enemy. You will
notice that dark blue lines are drawn from your
bases to the bases the computer sends the ships.
These lines show, where new ships will be sent.
Every new ship that comes to the base is directly
sent to the next planet following the dark blue
line. So you don't have to send every single new
ship explicitely.
'AI/Do Tactics' causes that the computer moves your
ships in the Tactics mode. 'AI/Do Battles' causes,
that the computer gives them fighting orders in the
battle mode, which will be explained later.

How to command ships in the tactics mode

After you watched the computer for a while, you may
want to command your ships yourself. Before you do
this, you should disable 'AI/Do Tactics' in the
menu. Now you can command ships by selecting the
base, where the ships are, pressing the 'm' key or
selecting 'Move ships to' in the Orders window,
and clicking the destination base. All following
ships arriving at the base will be sent to the
destination base as well.
There is another way to command ships, which is
done the same way, but by pressing the 't'-key
instead of the 'm'-key. This way you can send ships,
but following ships will not be sent to the same
destination.
You can also disable the order, that all following
ships are sent to a destination base by selecting a
base, pressing the 'm'-key and selecting the same
base again. So the ships will stay at the base and
you can collect some ships for an attack.

Defending your bases

You probably have noticed, that two fighters always
stay at your bases. You can change this in the
orders window in the 'Defenders' section. You can
select no fighters to defend to ten fighters. Note
that, if you leave no fighters in the base, it will
be conquered at once, if the enemy sends a ship
to this base.

The Battle Mode

You can enter the battle mode by doubleclicking an
attacked base. Now you see your spaceships and the
enemys spaceships fighting agains each other. If
soe of your fighters stay where they are
motionless, while the enemy is attacking you, you
maybe don't have 'AI/Do Battles' selected yet.
You can also command the ships yourself by
disabling 'AI/Do Battles' and using the orders-menu
or by clicking and commanding the ships in
'command&conquer'-style.

Advanced tactics

Now, as you know the basic rules of the game, I'll
give you some tactics hints.
1.
Use the defense settings. Two Fighters as a defense
may be good in many situations, but in bases, where
no enemy is near, you can set it down to zero,
while you could increase it in some other regions
where you are attacked.
2.
Try to conquer the bases at the left of your
region first, while you can loose some of your bases
over your region. So the Kyonians (green) will
attack the Deldarians (red) first, when they enter
the Battlefield.